A MAJOR OR A MINOR MIRACLE?
By Harrietta Turner
First of all, … we are not to major on miracles as, in comparison to the greatness of our God Himself in all His wonder, power, and glory, all miracles are minor. It is sometimes easy to have our attention shifted from His person to His works. We can stay on guard against this happening … and His Word shows forth Who He is and how He first speaks to us and needs to be First, above miracles, in our lives.
However, I did experience what I consider a major miracle God granted me in answer to an immediate need this morning. To someone else, it might be considered only minor. Miracles could possibly be judged by the depth of the need they are meeting. And to me, mine was major … whereas to others who enjoy and have more computer abilities and experience with finances it would be a minor miracle.
I have 4 electric bills to pay each month. This month they were due on the 4th. My Social Security check arrives at my bank account on the 3rd of each month which it did today. And each month I use the information already entered into the Make a payment segment of the French Broad Electric Company to pay each bill separately. This has been a very easy and efficient way to pay.
But this morning it would not let me into my payment information page saying my Username and Password were incorrect. This has never happened in all the months I’ve used their computer site to pay my bills. All I knew to do was to try and change my Password and when I clicked on that request, I was asked to enter the answer to my Security questions I had entered when I set up the online payment account and I finally found these among all the information pages I keep posted on my bedroom wall. I hadn’t needed this in so long it took me quite a while to locate it. Then I came back to my computer and entered these in the appropriate place. And the response when I clicked on that page was that my answers were invalid. And I was given no further options and I had no way to pay my bills which were due by tomorrow. The power bills were for my house, the two renter dwellings, and our security light. I was concerned that there wasn’t time to mail in the payments by postal mail and have them received until several days late and in the past, I had found that paying by telephone was complicated enough for me to not be successful at that without great difficulty.
Ordinarily, when I need the Lord’s help I pray in general, but this time I felt the urgency to pray in the faith which is more important, and which isn’t easy for me to do. But I managed to make a specific faith prayer request. And then I decided to go back to the computer and see what options I had or what I could try next.
My first attempt earlier had indicated the Username was not Correct but my now my 2nd attempt indicated a problem with both the Username and the Password. Therefore, I entered the only User Name I had and this seemed to be all right this time so then I counted the dots hiding the Password and the number of dots was one less than the Password I had typed on my printed information on my bedroom wall. I tried the only thing I could think of and that was to erase the 8 hidden-digit Password and retype in the 9-digit Password that I had saved on my wall. And then when I clicked enter it went right to the Payment Site and I was immediately able to pay all of the electric bills as usual.
How did one digit of my hidden password become missing is the question? And which of the letters or the one number had become missing? But there is no way to know how or how that could have happened between the date I last paid all the electric bills and today as I hadn’t even gone to the Website since I had used it before to pay all of the electric bills.
So, to me, this was a major Miracle. Because, If I had had to hire someone to drive me to the local County FBEMC, even if I could have located such a person or if my usual driver was available in time, I would have had to pay them about $50 to come way out to this mountain I live on to drive me way over to the office about 20 some miles away and then, of course, drive me way back to my town and then drive all the way back to their town in the neighboring town plus all the time involved, would have been somewhat expensive and time-consuming.
I learned how important it is to pray a faith-filled prayer and not just a casual prayer. And it gave me some food for thought about exactly what can be considered a Major Miracle vs. a Minor Miracle.
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Harrietta Turner lives in Spruce Pine. She graduated from Tulane University School of Social Work.
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